


Mornings Alone

by witchqueencirce



Series: Fallout 4: Charlotte Walsh [10]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25593736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchqueencirce/pseuds/witchqueencirce
Summary: In the fall of 2077, five weeks following Jennifer Lands' murder at the hands of Eddie Winter, the original Nick Valentine wakes up on the couch at the home of Charlotte and Nate Walsh. Based onthese two paragraphsI wrote three years ago.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine, Female Sole Survivor/Sole Survivor's Spouse, Jennifer Lands/Nick Valentine, Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine, Sole Survivor/Sole Survivor's Spouse (Fallout)
Series: Fallout 4: Charlotte Walsh [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/484085
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Mornings Alone

“There’s my girl.” It’s the first thing Nate’s said all morning and Nick peeks open an eye just in time to see Charlie sit in her husband’s lap at one of the stools in the kitchen. He watches them as they read the morning’s paper together, Nate’s arm around her as his hand idly strokes over the barely there bump on her stomach. Nick pulls the pillow over his eyes before he can see any more. 

The smell of Nate’s coffee makes it way over to him and another wave of nausea runs through him. He can still feel the burn of last night’s whiskey on his tongue, can feel the headache already starting around his temples. An all around poor start to his day. He's barely slept, staring at the ceiling from where he lays on the Walsh’s pull-out couch. It's been five weeks since Jennifer… since Jennifer… he can't even finish the thought. 

He doesn’t want to think about it. Can’t.

He’s been on leave, forbidden from duty and his service weapon. As much as he hates to admit it, it’s probably for the best.

_ It’s probably for the best _ , he has to keep telling himself that as the rage for what Eddie Winter has done threatens to boil over in his veins, mixing with the nausea.

Jenny wouldn’t want him to do what he has wanted to do so badly for the past thirty-five days, two hours, and a handful of minutes judging by what time he knows Nate usually wakes. Jenny was never the kind to condone revenge. 

_ Was.  _ He hates using the past tense for her.

And neither are the Walsh’s for revenge, who sit five feet from him enjoying domestic bliss. A couple of moments of happiness that they think they can steal before he wakes up. He knows they try to hide it from them, knows their grieving Jenny nearly as much as he does, but they still have each other… and the new addition on the way.

Sometimes he wonders what his life would have been if he and Charlie wouldn’t have called it quits on their romance five years ago. Would it have been him at the kitchen island this morning, greeting Charlie with her belly swelled with their child?

He certainly wouldn’t be feeling the heartache he does now.

At least, he doesn’t think he would be. 

Or maybe it would be the same, Charlotte Hughes’ name on a grave instead of Jenny Lands’.

Maybe the best thing that had ever happened to Charlie was Nate Walsh walking into her life. And maybe Nick was the worst thing to ever walk into Jenny’s.

If Charlie had never met Nate Walsh as he’d visited his grandparents at their retirement home in Salem just while she’d been visiting her grandmother in the apartment next door, they’d have never gone for a coffee before catching the train back to Boston.

And if they’d never have gone for coffee, Nick - former lover and best friend of Charlie - would have never met Jennifer Lands. 

Jenny was Nate’s first cousin, from that same set of grandparents. Charlie had met her during her first Thanksgiving spent with Nate’s family. Right away, she’d thought how much Nick would like her, setting up a blind date between the pair for the following week.

And Nick was smitten immediately.

_ And look what good that had done Jenny. He’d led her right into Eddie Winter’s crosshairs. _

He feels the tears coming to his eyes. He can’t. He can’t think this way. 

“Wakey, wakey, Nicky. Breakfast’s ready.” It’s Charlie’s voice from behind his closed eyelids. He doesn’t respond, but feels her weight shift on the sofa bed. He must have drifted too far into his thoughts of guilt to even realize she’d cooked. “Nicky?” 

He wants to kick himself for not answering when he hears the concern in her voice.

He swallows the lump forming in his throat. “Yeah... morning Charlie.” 

He knows that she knows his mouth feels like a sewer and his head feels like a drum section from the tone in his voice. She’s been there for the first time he’s been hungover, and she’s certainly here at the present for his most recent. She knows the signs. 

_ Damn Nate and his strong liver and chipper morning attitude.  _ Nick had never been able to hold his liquor the same way, at least not at the rate he’d been drinking lately.

He opens his eyes and pulls himself into a sitting position, giving her a halfhearted smile to ease the worry he sees still on her face.

She mirrors the expression as she sets a tray with eggs topped with cheese and bacon and toast on his lap.

Nick takes one whiff and knows that was a mistake, promptly leaning over to relieve the boozy contents of his stomach into the bowl Nate had the forethought to leave beside the pullout.

Charlie rubs his back as he does, “Oh Nicky, I know all about morning sickness. Let it out.” He can hear the tremble in his voice and he knows she means more than just letting go of his stomach contents.

Nick can’t recall much more from the morning beyond spending most of his morning with his head in that bowl, not as his data banks unload old memories for the new. He wonders how much longer he’ll get to keep the original Nick’s memories, he wonders if having Charlie around helps him keep those ones for longer.

“Wakey, wakey, Nicky. Breakfast’s ready.” 

Nick rolls over, two hundred and twenty years later, greeted by the same face he’s known since the original Nick Valentine was fifteen. And this time his mouth isn’t sawdust, his head isn’t beating out a new rhythm. He’s clear and a smile spreads across his worn face.

And this morning, Charlie gives him a kiss on the lips.

Everything’s different, and yet everything’s the same in the words she uses to greet him first thing in the morning.

They’re alone at the Home Plate, Shaun spending the weekend with Piper and Nat. Their little family making their home in Diamond City for the winter; they’ll head back north to Sanctuary Hills for farming season once the snow starts to melt. Back to the little office she’s had built for him and the old home with the uncomfortable pull out couch.

The hand that’s still covered in synthetic skin moves to brush a stray wave of hair from Charlie’s face, the dyed dark colour and bob of two centuries ago long grown out. 

She leans into his touch for a brief moment before handing him his breakfast. A synth doesn’t need much in the way of nutrition - at least not pre-gen 3 synths - so a coffee and a cigarette has become his breakfast. A far cry from the cheesy eggs and bacon and toast from the past.

At least he doesn’t have much of the stomach -  _ literally  _ \- to embarrass himself the way he did that morning.

_ The perks of being an earlier model of synth he guessed. _

Nick sometimes wonders how Charlie feels about her lover and her son being synths, and then he remembers the nights when she makes him promise to take care of the boy long after she’s gone. The fear he sees in her eyes that they’ll have to watch her grow old. That Nick will have to lose her again, after thinking she’d been gone for two hundred years. That thought hurts as much as the memories of Jenny do.

Charlie’s now the only one who had been present that morning from the original Nick’s memories, even if the original Nick Valentine is still here only in a microchip. 

Two bullets had taken the pair of cousins from both of them.

He wonders what Nate and Jenny would think that he and Charlie are together again. Not just the best friends they always were, but resuming their long ago romantic love. He hopes that they’d be happy for them, hopes that they wouldn’t want either of them to spend any more mornings alone.

Nick knows he doesn’t want any more of those.

**Author's Note:**

> [Check out my writing masterpage on tumblr!](https://witchqueencirce.tumblr.com/writing) Thank you for reading! ❤


End file.
